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Comment by codeulike | Hacker News Reader

A key component of Brave New World, that this article barely touches on, is genetic engineering. In BNW people do not 'breed' naturally but are created en-masse in genetic factories. This creates the in-book caste system of alphas, betas, gammas etc. Low skill workers are deliberately bred to have low intelligence and conditioned to like their allotted jobs. There is a memorable scene in the book where a class of infants is conditioned by loud scary noises to not like bright flowers or natural scenes. They are being conditioned to be happy with grey drabness.

So the reason 1984 is mentioned a lot more at the moment compared to BNW is that we aren't really in the BNW zone yet. But perhaps there will be a time when BNW is even more relevant. Things somewhat like Gattacca and BNW might still come to pass.

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Huxley got the mechanism wrong, but we are currently conditioning the children to be more interested in digital screens than in outdoor/natural activities. This isn't new - TV as a babysitter has moved to mobile device as a babysitter.

It seems to be working quite well.

My understanding is that this doesn't require conditioning -- the brightness of screens, their changing contents, and the dopamine hits one gets from interacting with them makes them grab and hold attention regardless of previous exposure.

Also... Orwell's writing was a lot more closely linked to stuff Orwell observed. He was a journalist and colonial by trade.

Huxley put more abstract ideas about humans and science into his world. Human engineering, happiness pills and genetic predispositions (like Douglas Adams' cow that wants to be eaten). This makes it feel more like a parable, a world that exists to play with ideas, like discworld.

Orwell's grim world was just a lot closer to stuff that existed, and still exists.

In a recent vice documentary about Assad's Syria, a policeman confesses "I am Winston Smith" after taking a journalist on a tour of Orwellian lies. It's not a coincidence, Assad's regime is built on ideas from Nazism and Stalinism, the regimes 1984 was parodying.

> colonial by trade

Honest question. What is a "colonial" ?

One of the members of the British upper class who inserted themselves into ruling positions in the colonies.

Orwell was born in Bihar, India. His father worked in the Opium Department of the civil service, overseeing its export to China. He grew up in the English "public" (upperclass) schools. At 19 he went to be a policeman in Burma.

Orwell (Blaine) was a policeman in Burma during the 20s.

More generally, colonial(ist) usually refers to employees (especially European ones) of the colonial state(s).

> Assad's regime is built on ideas from Nazism and Stalinism

I understood that this regime had taken more of its idea from Pan-Arabism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-Arabism

Yes, in a formal ideological sense. The practicalities of running a state were Soviet/Stalinist in practice, both formally (the SU was an ally) and informally (look up hitchens talking about Stalinist influence on the baath policies, especially Saddam's famous purge.

Nazism also had some (mostly earlier) influence. Some was informal. Some is formal. The Syrian Social Nationalist Party is still quite influential (also to an extent in Lebanon). It's part of Assad's coalition and one of the parties allowed to formally exist in Syrian politics.

You don't think we're being conditioned to be passive against each other and, by proxy, our government?

You don't think we're being conditioned to value the abstinence of violence for whatever reason regardless of claims of justification?

You don't think we're being conditioned to ignore the reasons people blow up and instead ask how they had the means to be able to do so?

You don't think we're being conditioned to complain about the way things are without thinking about the way things could, or even should, be?

The book should be taken at face value indeed.

Some people call it conditioning, others call it education. Societies seem to work better when people don't bash each others heads in all the time, so we try to teach our children that violence is not okay. That seems pretty reasonable to me.

It seems pretty reasonable to me too. Indeed, education is supposed to enlighten you to see others viewpoints. Why do we continue to have problems meeting eye to eye with others' ideas then?

Education is as much to create willing and accepting members of a society, however unjust that happens to be, as to educate. What else is a pledge of allegiance?

If you condition/educate away the social acceptance of demonstrations or even riot then one of the checks and balances of a society is removed. When the reaction comes it's likely to be a more extreme one, or if enough checks and balances are removed, straight to civil war or coup.

>Societies seem to work better when people don't bash each others heads in all the time

What society exists today that proves this?

No.

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